Nikita's Lyndsy Fonseca on that Shocking Alex Twist and Why 'Division Will Never be the Same'

Everything changed on Nikita this Friday, when Alex — who has seemed a little off since being kidnapped by Amanda, no? — took the matter of “freeing” Division into her own hands.

What exactly that meant wasn’t entirely clear at first, only that someone (ahem, Alex) was forming a mutiny of sorts among the non-inner-circle agents in hopes of putting an end to the underground organization that had been (unintentionally) taking innocent lives.

Alex, however, was unable to keep her secret from Ryan, and as a result found herself holding her boss and friend at gunpoint. Flashing between her current circumstances and those that seemingly happened to her in one of Amanda’s creepy brain-surgery chairs back in South Ossetia, Nikita’s protege pulled the trigger and left Ryan for dead.

With the Division boss clinging to life (unconsciously), Alex was able to convince Michael and Nikita that a rogue operative had done the damage, thus buying herself — and her covert mission — a little more time.

Here, Lyndsy Fonseca breaks down for TVLine her alter ego’s game-changing move, discusses Amanda’s powerful hold over the misguided agent and reveals the twists and turns ahead for Division at the end of the CW saga’s third season.

TVLINE | This has been such a great season for you and Alex.
The first part of this season I didn’t really know where I stood. I was in Division and was an agent, but I wasn’t really. I had this other life as Alexandra Udinov and it was cool because Alex was feeling that way and it’s how I felt as an actress. Then as the season went on, the writers were so great at giving Alex’s relationship with Amanda more thought… The second half of the season has just been so fun and challenging. I loved it.

TVLINE | What was your reaction to learning that Amanda was going to mess with Alex in such a major way?
The thing is, Amanda didn’t change her as a person; she just went into Alex’s brain and unplugged a couple things and then plugged them back into the wrong holes — she switched the wires. [Laughs] Basically, everything Alex is saying is stuff that she and Nikita have agreed on before and felt passionate about. But now she’s making connections and creating things that don’t really fit. Some things are true, but she wouldn’t have gone about it in this way prior to Amanda doing that rewiring. It’s Alex being very Alex and Alex being very irrational. It’s really fun to play because it kicks her into overdrive.

TVLINE | Will there be a point where Alex remembers exactly what Amanda did to her?
Right now, maybe in the back of her mind, there’s this uneasy feeling. You know when something really intense happens in your life and then you look back on it and it’s a little bit foggy? There’s something in her “getting kidnapped by Amanda” fog that maybe she remembers, but it’s pushed down so deep into her subconscious that she’s not aware that Amanda has done something. In fact, the way that it’s written and the way that I’ve been playing it, it’s almost like she’s even more clear with the actions that are presently in front of her… Eventually, there are certain events that will prove to her that what’s happened before was not real. And when those things come out, she can’t deny it anymore. She’s going to have to start to face the facts.

TVLINE | Talk a little about Alex shooting Ryan. She seemed so desperate in that moment, yet so resolute.
She believes truly that getting these people out is the right thing to do. It’s this emotional guilt that’s deeper than anyone else feels in Division. There are the girls she left behind in the brothel and her family that she left, so there are many of these recurring situations where she feels like she got to live and they didn’t. To continue on living, she has to save these people. That’s something that was in old Alex, but now with the rewiring it’s like she’s connecting the dots in an unrealistic way. And when Ryan is all of the sudden [confronting her], he’s a threat and she’s not going to let anyone stop her. It wasn’t a conscious ‘I want to kill you’ shoot; it was a ‘don’t stop me from doing this’ kind of thing.

TVLINE | And afterward you somehow managed to play Alex as void of emotion yet highly emotional.
Totally. What’s going to happen is, because she’s not her full self, she’s going to continue fighting for these things. But all of these consequences are going to catch up to her. She can’t keep on doing all of these things, creating this team of mutineers to go against Division — it’s all going to come to a head.

TVLINE | In the end, Michael seems to know something is not right with Alex.
He and the rest of the group have this uneasy feeling… But it’s not enough of a character change for people say, ‘Lock her up!’ [Laughs] It’s what Amanda probably wanted, just putting this mole in there — with Alex not knowing she is one — to stir the pot and cause mayhem. Eventually there’s going to be certain things that come up where she’ll have to realize, ‘Holy s–t! This is what’s happening.’

TVLINE | At this point she’s essentially gotten away with her plan. Should we expect more mutiny ahead?
Yes! The mutiny thing definitely goes further and further for at least a couple of episodes after this one. Alex is going to be stuck in the middle… Things are going to go so far out of her control. It’s all going to blow up. There’s really sad, crazy s–t that’s going to happen. [Laughs] Division will never be the same, and this is really the beginning of it.

TVLINE | What does this all of this mean for Sean and Alex?
He gets involved. He figures out some stuff coming up and he’s stuck in the sense that he loves her and wants to stand by her side, but he’s also trying to get her to understand that something’s different in her… There’s something crazy coming up with Sean, so I don’t want to give it away. [Laughs]

TVLINE | Will the “real” Alex ever return? And will we see the emotional impact of what she’s done — namely to Ryan?
[Showrunner] Craig [Silverstein] wrote a great line for Nikita recently that made sense to me, which is — and I’m paraphrasing — as long as Alex runs away from things that she hasn’t dealt with in her past, as long as that holds power over her, Amanda’s trickery will continue to run her life… Eventually, things get worse and then she goes on this rampage and there’s revenge and such cool stuff comes up. And once she can harness all of that, she’ll know where [things have been altered in her head] and she can make sense of it. It doesn’t ever necessarily go away, but there will be an understanding of it.

TVLINE | Given the extent to which Amanda has ratcheted up her evilness in recent weeks, should we expect some additional jaw-dropping moments between she and the ladies of Division?
Yes! It gets really juicy. Right now what’s airing is a little more Amanda/Alex-centric, but the end of the season — and especially the finale — is really good Amanda/Nikita stuff. Michael’s also thrown in there, believe it or not. He comes into the mix in interesting ways.